Planned to win all the way around.
He slipped the backpack off and watched Wildfire rush over to him from the RV, worry clear on her face. Let Bo get ahead. Riley had more important things to do at this moment.
“You’re stopping again?”
He almost felt bad that he was putting that look of concern in her eye, although he could admit he was happy to see it there. She was right to be a little concerned. Under normal situations, he would’ve been near death before stopping for medical attention three times in a row.
She put her hands on the rotator cuff of his shoulder, pressing to check for inflammation or soreness, since this was the “injury” he’d had last time he’d come through camp about forty minutes ago. “Does this hurt?”
Hurt? Hell no. He had to hold back his groan at how good her hands felt on him. He shook his head. “No, it’s feeling better.”
She narrowed those hazel eyes at him. “Let me get this straight. Your knee was hurting when you came in here the first time. That was feeling better when you came back around the second time, but your shoulder was hurting. Now you’re telling me your shoulder is not hurting, yet you’re stopping again?”
He could barely keep from smiling. He’d known Wildfire was too smart to fool for long. He was surprised he’d even made it to the second round.
He slid both his sleeves up, then held up his elbow and pointed to it. “I was injured going through the woods and got scratched. Zac has us on the most menacing trails out there.”
Her eyebrow was raised so high she looked like an emoji.
“What?” he asked, all innocence. “I think I might need stitches.”
She finally looked down at his elbow. When he heard her little chuckle, he thought his heart might actually burst out of his chest.
That’s what was wrong.
It came to him so suddenly it almost floored him.
Wildfire hadn’t been laughing. At all. Not with him, not with anyone else. She was so lively and full of life that the absence of her laughter was completely foreign and unnatural. Her laughter had been the first thing he’d ever noticed about her.
He’d been going about this all the wrong way, thinking about their breakup from a purely selfish standpoint—why had she broken up with him? That wasn’t the question he needed to be asking at all.
What had caused her to stop laughing?
And even more importantly, how could he bring the laughter back?
He definitely couldn’t bring it up directly. He knew her well enough to know that. Whatever was going on, he couldn’t force the details out of her. He was going to have to gentle the details out of her.
Court her. Woo her. Make her understand there was nothing in this world she couldn’t trust him with.
She shook her head, looking down at his arm. “I can tell it really hurts by the way you’re holding up the wrong elbow, Harrison.”
Shit. Ha ha. He quickly brought up the other elbow, which did, in fact, have a tiny scratch on it. “Yeah, this one. I have elbow dyslexia.”
She touched his arm, then looked up at him, fighting off a smile, and shook her head. “Stay right here while I go get my amputation kit. There’s no saving a limb with a wound this terrible. Almost like the first time.”
She remembered the first race. Their first time talking. Good. He wanted her to remember.
He nodded solemnly. “That’s what I was afraid of.”
“What are you doing, Ry?” she whispered.
“Just spending a little time with my favorite nurse, getting myself checked out.”
She rolled her eyes. “I think you need to get your head checked out.”
“We’ve both always known that.”
She opened the first aid kit in her hand and pulled out a bandage. He gave her his best scared face.
“Is it going to hurt as you cut my arm off?”
She chuckled again as she opened the bandage. “Only if I accidentally slip and chop off your head instead.”
She placed the bandage over the tiny scratch. “There. Now get out of here with all your boo-boos.”
He winked at her. Someday soon you’ll be kissing my boo-boos and making them better again.
He was wise enough not to say it out loud, but there was no doubt in his mind that it was true.
“If you’ll come watch me rappel tomorrow, I won’t stop next time unless I’m actually injured.”
She shook her head. “You’re incorrigible. But yes, if I can.”
He slipped his pack back on and took off at a sprint. He had a race to win.
Chapter 11
The next time around, as promised, Riley didn’t stop to have any of his wounds tended. He gave Girl Riley a little salute as he ran past, grinning as he heard her call out, “What? No amputations this time?”
God, how he loved that woman.
It was time to move on to one of his favorite portions of the race: navigation and puzzles.
So much of what Phoenix did on a regular basis was physical in nature—after all, physical danger made for exciting viewing. But that didn’t mean he didn’t like mental challenges also.
The navigation portion of the race wasn’t physically difficult, but if a participant wasn’t careful, these puzzles could add a lot of minutes to their overall race time. The race had been won or lost here before.
Every competitor’s route was different in this segment. They each had a particular color that corresponded with their puzzles and were given only a compass and a rudimentary map. They had to complete each puzzle to gain the flag and move on to the next segment, puzzle, and flag.
It required patience and mental acuity, both of which weren’t always easy to find when your brain and body were exhausted from two and a half days of brutal racing already.
Riley pulled his focus inward, blocking out everything else: his exhaustion, discomfort, real and pretend booboos, and even what was going on with Wildfire. He’d need all his focus and concentration to make it through this segment as quickly as possible.
This was where being a world-class athlete came in handy: he knew how to focus his mind.
It was time to make up for lost ground.
He moved competently for the first two hours through the easier clues and puzzles, running into various other athletes on their quests. Since everyone was looking for different colored flags, it didn’t matter that they were all roaming the same woods, and it certainly wouldn’t help a competitor to follow someone else.
He studied his map and the natural markers it provided—rivers, boulder, ledges—then used his compass and found where the next puzzle should be—near a tree where a small creek turned south.
But it wasn’t there.
Riley looked all around in case it had fallen but didn’t see it anywhere.
Finally, with a curse, he backtracked to where he’d found the last puzzle box, completed it, and gotten the flag. He must’ve made some sort of error in his navigation.
He recalculated everything, forcing himself to slow down and follow the map more closely in case he’d made a mistake. Even the smallest of errors could have pointed him in the wrong direction.
But even that slow, he ended up at the same place. Still no puzzle. Without the puzzle, he couldn’t get the flag. Shit. He could continue, but he’d be penalized.